Introduction

This is a brief guide to help you to install a newer version of Open Office on your Linux box w/out root access. For example, you could be installing into your home directory. Things have gotten a lot easier since the RHEL4 days.

Incompatible GLIBC version for RHEL5 and Open Office 3.4

If the above fails you may have an older version of GLIBC than the version used to compile it. You’ll then get a lot of errors like this:oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/ure-link/bin/javaldx: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org/ure/bin/../lib/libuno_sal.so.3)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/ure-link/bin/javaldx: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org/ure/bin/../lib/libxml2.so.2)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/ure-link/lib/libuno_sal.so.3)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/program/libsvt.so)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/program/libsvt.so)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.11' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/program/libvcl.so)
oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by oo_3.4.1/opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/program/../ure-link/lib/libxml2.so.2)

Creating a custom wrapper shell script

If you are using my run_gapp script and custom environment you can create a small wrapper script. This will get you newer version of various dependencies and should render fonts better, all without making changes as root. This is good for networked installs for big groups too. I call the script soffice.wrap

#!/bin/sh

# Wrap the Open Office Verison in home dir w/ the library wrapper for the same enviorn